2012 Wall of Scholars Honorees Etched into USC History

USC president C. L. Max Nikias with the 2012 Wall of Scholars honorees at the May 10 ceremony (Photo/Dietmar Quistorf)

A ceremony in Leavey Library on Thursday, May 10, honored more than five-dozen exceptional students whose names will soon be etched in glass on the Wall of Scholars.

Surrounded by the names of past honorees, USC President C. L. Max Nikias, USC Libraries Dean Catherine Quinlan, and Skull and Dagger Society President Jerry Papazian joined hundreds of family members, friends, faculty, and staff in congratulating the graduating students.

The Skull and Dagger Society, USC’s oldest honor society, created the Wall of Scholars in 1995. Each spring, the names of students who have been awarded a national or international scholarship, or who have earned certain USC academic accolades, are added to the wall’s glass panels in the library’s Weingart Reading Room.

Papazian welcomed the crowd to the ceremony and secured a round of applause “for a group that rarely gets acknowledged publicly: the parents and other family members who have been so supportive to our students.”

Nikias called the students’ inclusion on the Wall of Scholars “a tremendous tribute to your exceptional talents, your passion for knowledge, and your dedication to scholarship” and stressed the rarity of the distinction.

“You are now part of a very select group of outstanding students whose accomplishments will always be recorded in this prominent place,” Nikias said. “When you return to campus in a few months or a few years or a few decades, you can always return to this place in this room. And when you do, you can proudly show your friends and your families, and even your own children or grandchildren that you have a special place in the history of academic excellence in this university.”

Quinlan noted that Leavey Library, which students visit more than one million times each year, is a fitting place to honor the academic success of USC students.

“This is our only library that is open 24 hours a day, so I know that many of the students with us today know this library particularly well,” she said. “The Weingart Reading Room is one of our most popular study places on campus, and if you walk through at three o’clock in the morning, it is full. That’s a testament to the quality of our students, and why we are honoring so many today.”